RALEIGH -- When she was only a preschooler, Sierra Pharr lost her mother to a brutal beating. But during a Sunday afternoon vigil at the spot where Jacquetta Thomas'body was discovered 19 years ago, her daughter, Pharr, didn't focus on the mother's love she never knew.
Instead, she pondered the suffering of Greg Taylor, who spent 17 years in prison for the murder he didn't commit.
"I really can't say, compared to him, that I've been through everything," Pharr said, after Taylor quietly came to and left the vigil.
Taylor's truck had been stuck in the mud nearby, sparking a chain of events that led to his conviction and imprisonment in 1993 for Thomas' murder and his eventual exoneration in February by a three-judge panel.
Among the evidence that provoked judges to upend his conviction: blood analysis withheld by the SBI at the time of Taylor's trial. Over the past several months, the SBI has been under scrutiny by The News & Observer, the Attorney General's Office and state legislators.
On Sunday, Thomas' family members, church people and victims advocate groups gathered beneath a canopy in the middle of a cul-de-sac near the spot where her body was found at the industrial end of South Blount Street in Raleigh in September 1991. Arriving a few minutes after the event began at 4p.m., Taylor walked up and stood quietly in the hot sun behind the tent.
Thomas' sister Yolanda Littlejohn spotted Taylor from the podium and thanked him for the friendship they've built in the months before and after his exoneration.
"It was tragic, what happened to you," she told him. "But know that my family is still hurting."
Littlejohn later said she doubted Taylor's guilt as early as 1997. She couldn't imagine a stranger beating another person to death with so much aggression.
"Her death was personal," she said. "It was overkill. A lot of things just didn't add up."
Waiting in line to light a candle in Thomas' memory, Taylor and Littlejohn embraced.
After the vigil, Littlejohn comforted her tearful 10-year-old daughter, who never knew her aunt but has absorbed the family's pain. Taylor offered some soft words and turned to leave ahead of the crowd, declining reporters' requests for comment.
"This isn't the right time," he said.
Taylor's quest for freedom cast a harsh light on the shoddy science and pro-prosecution bias of the SBI's blood analysis unit. After Taylor's exoneration, Attorney General Roy Cooper ordered an audit of the blood unit. Released in August, the audit found 229 cases in which SBI analysts hadn't reported the results of sophisticated blood tests to prosecutors.
Recently, attorneys have been seeking independent forensic analysis from private laboratories over concerns that SBI results might taint judicial proceedings.
Taylor's freedom puts the case back in the hands of the Raleigh Police Department. Two officers in dark suits attended the vigil Sunday.
'Some new leads'
"We've got some new leads we're following up on," said Sgt. Brian Limper, who has had two detectives dedicated to Thomas' case since March. "They're still making progress."
Littlejohn said much of her pain lies in not knowing who killed her sister.
"We don't know why, we don't know how," Littlejohn said.
With TV cameras surrounding the vigil tent, Littlejohn said her older sister had a kind heart, loved to play softball as a child, and was more than the character portrayed by the media.
"You'll never know what kind of person that she was to us," she said.
Until Sunday, neither she nor Pharr had visited the murder site.
"The first time I've ever seen my mom was when the newscast showed a picture of her," said Pharr, who was a preschooler when her mother died. "I never remember her holding me, telling me she loved me."
Staff writer Mandy Locke contributed to this report..
